Crombeen was scheduled to earn $1,050,000 in 2012-13 before the lockout began. Tampa Bay acquired Crombeen from the St. Louis Blues in July, so the work stoppage has also delayed his Lightning debut.

Obviously, the ECHL is a big jump down from the NHL, but it won’t be an entirely new experience for Crombeen. He logged 22 regular season games and another 22 playoff contests with the ECHL Idaho Steelheads before he made his debut with the Dallas Stars in 2007-08.

Please note that someone has now begun posting here under the erroneous names of “blomfelb” and “Ib4joey” ! Of course these names are fake and they should in no way be confused with either “yours truly” or blomfeld. blomfeld already has a good handle on who’s behind this little caper. But for good measure, he has also asked his old friend “Stransky” to take a look into this (ie: Stransky is a physicist and an expert in forensic causation analysis) and he’s assured blomfeld that he’ll have the name of this imposter within 48 hours, with a margin for error of “plus or minus” 2.5 hours. Once this imposter has been identified, then suffice it to say that he/she will be “dealt with” quickly and ruthlessly.